Gannon University Faculty & Staff Talent Show to Benefit Students

t's an impulse that's as old as Sophocles (or at least the
Little Rascals): Let's put on a show.

And when that show is a benefit for a group of Gannon University
students who are traveling to Scotland this summer to, essentially,
put on a show that makes this event unusually compelling.

It's the talent show put on by the College of Humanities,
Education and Social Sciences (CHESS) on Saturday at 8 p.m. at the
Schuster Theatre.

The show features the talents of CHESS faculty, staff and
alumni, and while you might be able to guess some of the performers
and what they will do (yes, the Rev. Shawn Clerkin will sing),
others might surprise you.

Who knew, for instance, that English department professor Doug
King played guitar and sang, or that the theatre department's Paula
Barrett . . . well, we won't spoil that last one. It's going to be
good.

And that's the point. There are so many talented CHESS pieces,
past and present that it's surprising that the idea never came up
until now. That it did is the result of the imagination and hard
work of senior Cristen Manion, who is one of the students who will
travel to Edinburgh to take part in the International Collegiate
Theatre Festival (ICTF) in August.

ICTF is part of the Edinbugh Festival Fringe, thought to be the
largest arts festival in the world. Taking the company of
performers, faculty advisors, costumes and sets across the ocean is
a huge undertaking, and students have been unusually creative in
devising ways to raise funds for the venture.

"Cristen asked what we could do the first week of semester,
which is normally a pretty slow time for campus events," said Jax
Kubiak, the Schuster Theatre's technical director. "Cristen said,
'Students are always onstage, so what if we got faculty involved?'
It was a great question."

The answer won't be fully known until Saturday evening as many
of the performers are getting their acts together--literally--until
the curtain goes up.